We're Back!

We're home now, safe and sound. The trip down Hiway 50 was so beautiful. The trees are healthy (unlike Yellowstone) and the American River was perfect. The only problem was that Gary forgot about how many curves there are and how the sun shines right in your eyes when you travel toward Roseville in the late afternoon.

Now the work begins--unloading the RV and doing a mountain of laundry. But the trip was worth it. One more day with Mom so she can see Erik, then she is on her way back to Seattle. We're all really glad we took this trip together.

The Gambler

We stopped in Carson City. I took the dogs for a long walk in the historical area where we found a place to park the RV,then I had lunch in the motorhome. It got too hot in the RV while I was waiting for Mom and Gary to finish gambling, so the dogs and I went for a walk and found a yarn shop. Of course, I had to buy something--my first yarn for the whole trip.

Mom had pie ala mode for lunch, then an hour later I got a call from Gary saying "how do I get her to stop?"



He kept telling her they had to leave, but she kept winning so wouldn't stop. I guess Gary doubled his money and Mom quadrupled her money.




Finally he convinced her we needed to get on the road.

The Loneliest Road

When we left Delta, UT, the RV park owner told us Hiway 50 was known as "the Loneliest Road". Then we saw the sign. It is an offical name, not a joke!

It was interesting, if boring, watching the same scenery for mile after mile. Then it got a bit prettier with trees and some snow up high.

















We finally reached our destination, Austin,NV. After driving back and forth and around this little almost ghost town, up and down hills, on very narrow, very old roads, we finally found the RV park. The lady I talked with had told me it was next to the Austin Baptist Church, but we discovered it actually was the Austin Baptist Church and RV Park. Hahahahahah!


















It
was a nice quiet evening of cards with the card shark--but I WON! Ha ha!

Such Soft Dirt

Utah was amazing, a geologists dream, I'm sure.







So many different land formations and so many different colored stripes delineating the different eras.


It was like a history lesson in dirt and rock.















The most fun part was that the dirt looked like this--full of cracks. But it was so soft for walking. Every rest stop as well as our RV park had cracked dirt that looked totally dry, but felt like you were walking on a very squishy gymnastics mat. It actually was luxury walking.

Traveling with a Card Shark

We have now hit every kind of weather. Snow on the sides of the road entertained us after we left Deb's. Since none was on the pavement and there was no ice, it was a treat to see it. There was heat and sun as we left home. Then sleet at Yellowstone, rain in North Dakota with lots and lots of mud, thunderstorm in Rapid City, SD, fog thru Nebraska interspersed with sunshine, rain at Deb's in Colorado and finally snow (but none on the pavement)! Love it! Plenty of variety.

As we drove past Vail we saw a horrible truck accident on the other side of the freeway. The traffic going toward Denver was standing still for about 5 miles. Lots of State Police were walking along letting people know and then cars were being allowed off the freeway into Vail. There were at least 2 miles of trucks sitting there that weren't allowed into Vail. What a terrible mess.


At a rest stop near Vail we saw a beaver dam. Gary had spotted several as he drove and I could never see them. When he saw this one and no cars were coming, he stopped so I could not only see it, but get a photo.








Colorado has so much variety as we drive. The mountains are gorgeous. In the valleys there is still a lot of color, then as we headed west it started looking more and more like desert.














Mom loves to play cards, so this is how we spend many evenings after dinner. She is a real card shark so usually beats me, even though this game is new to her. Sheesh!

Fun at Deb's but leveler problems

The trip to Deb's was foggy so didn't see a lot but farmland close to the roads. Stopped in a small town for lunch and the dogs spotted a cat. From then on they had to stare at each house we went by to see if they could see a cat. Goofy dogs.




Mom was delighted to see that the RV park in Kimball, Nebraska had a working windmill.
















When we got to Deb's it was raining, but she was there to greet us, umbrella in hand! We had a great visit--non-stop talking.












Scott came over with his girlfriend--he looks great and is very happy.













Dinner was a Deb Feast--more food than a dozen more could eat, all looking prettier than a 5 star restaurant.

We got up to another feast for breakfast. Couldn't figure out why Gary wasn't coming in to eat. One look at his face as he came thru the door told the story. One of the levelers wouldn't go up. We were stuck. I called Good Sam repair service (AAA for RVs) and was on hold for 45 minutes. Meanwhile Darell and Gary analyzed the problem. This was a new one--the leveler had come totally loose! So Darrell had some good heavy wire and helped Gary wire it up and we will limp home on 3 levelers. I spend another 45 minutes on hold to cancel the service call and we are on our way to Grand Junction, CO. Never dull in RV land, that's for sure. The visit with Deb and Darrell and Scott and Jamie was one of the huge highlights of the trip.

South Dakota is amazing!

We drove through the edge of the Badlands of North Dakota--just enough to give us a little taste. Then we stayed at an interesting place near Lemmon, SD where we had our first frost of the trip. Froze the hose so no water for showers when we got up. Had to use our stored water. We were the only ones there and it was fenced, so the dogs had a ball sniffing out pheasant and other fun smells.



Then it was on to Rapid City and a beautiful RV park. We dropped off the RV, took the dogs for a nice run in the fenced-in dog area, left them in the RV and drove off to explore the beautiful Black Hills.



Saw lots of deer along the roads.










Saw Mt. Rushmore--got a great side view photo as we left the park.





















Then on to see Crazy Horse where we also saw our first snow flurries of the trip. We only had 3 hours of daylight, so didn't go into the museum, just took our photos and drove on.










We did a quick run-through of the National Museum of Woodcarving. Then drove on through Custer State Park and out by way of Needles Hiway. We saw a couple of buffalo right by the road in Custer State Park.






We ate dinner in a cute place in Hill City that had buffalo heads hanging above most of the tables. We got home, walked the dogs and relaxed. We went to bed just before the thunderstorm hit--loudest clap of thunder I've ever heard. Tule dove under Mom's bed (the sofa bed) and slept there the rest of the night. Thunder doesn't bother Elsie, I guess, because she stayed on her nice soft pillow.

For those of you who know Britta--her book now has 7 five star reviews on Amazon--6 of which were written by people who have never met her. She has sold 110 copies and is now putting up Youtube clips of how to do a few of the things in the book. She plans to release one video clip a week until Halloween. Go to
www.eerieelegance.com
to get to her book on Amazon to read the reviews or to see the youtube clips. They will also be on iTunes. She sure is pleased with the success of her first book.

Our day in Plaza

It is so funny to hear my cousin talk about the horrible traffic here nowadays. He says, “you have to look both ways, sometimes 3 ways before you can drive!” If we saw three cars or trucks in a mile, that meant it was a lot of traffic. They are used to being totally alone on the roads. The roads are dirt and gravel and the county maintains them by regrading twice a month. Denny drove 50 mph over washboard bumps. He had a 4 wheel drive Jeep and we drove right out into the fields and zoomed along over lots of bumps. It was amazing.






Mom had so much fun showing us all the interesting things around here. We saw the farm Dad grew up on, the farm where she was born, the school where she taught briefly, lots of oil wells including two that belong to my cousin. One of his oil wells is on land my Dad sold very cheap to my uncle and Denny bought it later. Mom said, “this could have been my oil well if Palmer (my Dad) hadn’t given his land away.” The ND inheritance was always a bone of contention between my folks. Dad thought they should just get rid of that “worthless” land. Mom said, “you can do what you want with your land, but I’m keeping mine and someday it will be worth something.”



It is very interesting to see how they seismograph the area, then set up stakes where they will drill the wells, then the set up of the drill. Then finally they have the pump in and you will always see a flame where the natural gas is being burned off. There is no infrastructure to use the natural gas--no pipeline for it. So it is just being wasted by a very pretty flame that is burning it off. Someday they hope to have a pipeline for the natural gas, but for now the oil is more important to the companies and they are having trouble keeping up with putting in the oil pipelines.














Looking in the phone book was a hoot--Plaza has 2.5 pages of names, Parshall has 5 pages, and New Town, where Denny and Sandy now live at the “lake house” more “in town”, has 10 pages. They really went big time when they moved from the farm in Plaza to New Town, but they really don’t like all the “traffic”.

Something that really bothered me was that all the wonderful old farm houses are not taken care of. Instead of fixing them up, they burn them and bring in a double or triple-wide “modular” home (we used to call them mobile homes). Nobody is a builder nearby, and they love to have their new home go in instantly, so ‘modular’ it is. There are some beautiful old houses that are going to ruin because they prefer the modular homes to working on fixing the old ones.

My Mom is a pie addict. We drove 40 min. to get Juneberry pie. Mmmmmmmm good! Not only had we never tasted Juneberries, but had never heard of them. They grow wild in ND and are worth the trip just to taste them. They look like a blueberry but taste more like a blackberry or marionberry, very few tiny seeds. Yummm. On the way back, a new hatch of bugs hit the CR-V windshield. Sounded like a sudden rainstorm, but when it ended the windshield was covered in dead bugs and no rain in sight.

Gary got a real education when we went out to dinner in the nicest restaurant around, the Scenic. It served basic food in a room that is very basic. I can’t think of any place I’ve ever eaten that looks like this in the Sacramento area. We have eaten out at 3 different places here and all serve the pop in cans. I haven’t seen one tablecloth. The food is good, but very plain.

The wind is something else. Always seems to be blowing hard. I can see why you would never want to have a haircut that had to be just so if you live here. You not only need wash and wear hair, but a cut that can blow and still look decent.

Montrail County, where Plaza is located, is a very patriotic area and very Republican. A high percentage of the kids go into the military from this county. You see a lot of American flags flying on the farms. My cousin commented that he feels very fortunate to have grown up in the small farming community of Plaza. He’d never want to live anywhere else. Everyone knows everybody and they help each other. I can see the attraction. I know the snow is hard, but they don’t mind it. At the Høstfest we met more than one person who had moved back to Minot from California when they retired because they like the warmth of the people in the area.

So for all of you who wondered why in the world we’d want to see North Dakota, we are so glad we came and we loved every minute we were in the state.

Family Time

We are now in New Town, ND (beyond Plaza and Parshall) at my cousin's. They are such a fun family. We had a great dinner with most of their family--lots of joking and laughing and old stories. The excitement was getting to their house.




It was raining--and you know how much I love rain--I actually hope it stops. There is concern that we won't be able to get out of here if it doesn't dry up. The last several miles to their house is hilly dirt road. It was pretty slippery getting into their dirt driveway.









After dinner we had a singalong. Sandy can really play the piano and has a zillion of the really old songs Mom loves. It was such a great evening.




Then we went out to the RV to go to bed and found that the sky light over the kitchen sink leaks--a lot. Guess what Gary gets to do today while I wash rugs and towels that are soaking wet?

Høstfest!

The Høstfest was fantastic! There was so much information, so many displays, so much to buy. It is held at the Fairgrounds in Minot. A very talented woodcarver has made many, many woodcarvings that are spaced out all over the venue.

I had to take a photo of the troll with a fish.














The carving of Myron Floren looks just like him.









Gary got to taste his first Walleye. Most of the food booths are run by the area churches and there are a lot of churches. You can buy lefse at many booths as well as several push carts. And, yes, there was a church that sold a Lutefisk, Swedish meatball and lefse dinner that Gary and Mom both said was fantastic.

One thing that probably shouldn't have surprised me so much is how many tall blond people are here. I usually can find Gary easily in a crowd. Here he seems to be just average and I feel kind of short. And I kept seeing people who looked like friends and relatives. It is that Scandinavian look that we don't realize is as predominant as it really is until you get a lot of them together.

Today we drove around Minot trying to find homes our relatives lived in. We couldn't find my grandmother's house, but did find my Aunt and Uncle's former house. Then we found something wonderful.


Minot has a Scandinavian Heritage Center that is just amazing. There is a recreation of a Stave church as well as a couple of buildings that were moved to Minot from Norway.And note the size of Gary next to the Dala Horse.














It was another great day. Tomorrow we'll see my cousins.

North Dakota!

We made it to North Dakota and enjoyed a night in Williston. Got up very early this morning and got to Minot by noon so we could go to the Høstfest. North Dakota scenery is somewhat the same as Montana, but more evergreen trees. Lots of fields and the oil wells are showing up more frequently.



Elsie finally got tired of helping Gary drive and has rested the last two days. Now she has Grandma to lean against and that has seemed to calm her down.

The Høstfest was wonderful. I bought lots of stuff today. Mom and Gary finally pooped out and sat at a table and ended up visiting with some friendly people who had a cousin in Lodi. As I was wandering around, a vendor said to me, "I didn't see you at your booth, I thought you didn't come this year." I had to tell her this was my first year and I wasn't who she thought I was. I guess I have a double who works at the Danish booth some years.

We saw Jo Ann Castle perform. She is amazing! So much energy. We all loved it. She graciously posed for photos after her performance.








To make it even more fun, for some reason I turned to my right during the concert and looked in the bleachers and who did I see? Brian and Wendy Rase! Sorry about the fuzzy photo. I forgot our camera and took this with the cell phone. Same with Jo Ann Castle's photo. Brian and Wendy have been visiting relatives for 3 weeks and have spent several days at the Høstfest. We talked for a half hour at least.



We plan to go back tomorrow (with a camera so you can see the wonderful wood carved decorations) and see more of the shows. There are a zillion and we can't decide which ones to see. I have to discontinue shopping so shows are a good way to stop that activity. But we hardly ever see all this great Scandinavian stuff to buy!

Tonight we are relaxing. Mom is already in bed at 9:30 (that's 7:30 Roseville time). Dogs can't figure out why we are going to bed so early.

Yellowstone and on to Billings, MT

Yellowstone was interesting yesterday, we did the West half of the two loops. Most of it made us sad to see so many dead trees. Only saw one bird for wildlife until we got to Mammoth Hot Springs. Then Elk were downtown and on the edge of town--lots of them. Just before Mammoth Hot Springs, the veiws became spectacular--waterfalls, great rock formations, lots of healthy trees.



My favorite part of the trip, of course, was the rain, some of hitting the windshield like sleet. Absolutely beautiful after our long stretch of summer! And it sounded heavenly hitting the roof.




We got to Old Faithful 5 minutes after it erupted, so Gary got a photo of the after effects. Didn't have time to stay 90 minutes to see it again. There was road construction in several places. They make everyone wait for 30 minutes, then have one side go thru, then the other. After the first three of these delays we realized we were going to be late meeting Mom's plane in Billings, so didn't stop for anything. Considering we were towing the CR-V in the mountains, then going 65 mph on the freeway (Gary never drives the RV that fast) we thought we did real well getting 7 mpg. To complicate things, Mom's plane arrived 35 minutes early, so she had to wait an hour for us to get to the airport. Thank goodness for cell phones.

Saw a very interesting rig in the parking lot by Old Faithful. It had a German name, new to us. We sure enjoy seeing the interesting ways people travel. Saw several tour buses and thought of Kris and Terry--wondered if they were on one of them.

We stayed at a nice Good Sam RV park in Billings. When I took the dogs out this morning the first thing we saw (right next to the RV) was a cute little bunny hopping away from us as fast as it could. Then as we wandered thru the RV park toward a field, we discovered several deer. The first two we saw just looked at us, then a half dozen popped up and started running around a tree in a complete circle with their tails wagging, then they all took off to go hide. I sure wish I had taken my camera on our walk.

Didn't get to the RV park until after dark, then had to make dinner while Gary set up the water and electricity. Then we had a nice, but short visit while we tried to stow all of Mom's stuff. I woke up in the middle of the night with ideas of where to put the rest of her stuff. Now we are organized, or at least as organized as we are going to be on this trip.

Williston, ND, here we come! Tomorrow we'll be at the Hostfest!

Grand Tetons

Gary loved the Grand Teton drive yesterday. We saw everything they told us we would, except a bear and moose. A bison put on a great show for us, jumping over a short fence to join a herd of horses, then turning around to stare at all the people taking photographs. Gary wondered why he wasn't with a herd and I told him it was because it was this bison's turn to pose for the cameras. We also saw a bull elk (in photo) with a lot of females with him (can't see them in the photo). Another photographer told us this elk had killed another elk down the road a few feet and a bear had been feeding off the downed elk. But we didn't stop to see the dead elk and the bear wasn't there at the time we drove by.


The scenery was beautiful--our timing was perfect for the changing colors, but our photos don't do them justice.




Elsie had trouble helping Gary drive, but she did her best from the back of the CR-V.